A few days ago I wrote a post about my general ineptitude and idiocy. I cited a couple of incidents as evidence to back up these claims, but I have more; many, many more. For example:
Case study one
I use to keep birds in an aviary. One day I found one of my favourites dead on the floor with no immediately evident cause of death. A few days later I was cleaning out when I noticed one of the electrical wires for the lighting had been chewed through. My exact thought process was: “Stupid bird, must have touched the cable†as I promptly reached up and touched the cable, causing myself to be thrown across the room by the electric shock.
Case study two
In my late teens my friends and I used to go into Huddersfield for a night on the town. There were only two buses running at the late hour we returned, and both took particularly tortuous routes through the surrounding countryside resulting in a journey of around an hour. Our beer filled bladders were rarely up to the task of enduring this period of time so we often got off a few miles from our village and walked the rest of the way.
One particular night we came across a three foot high wall with a hollow tree on the other side. Thinking I was perhaps the wittiest person in the entire world I vaulted the wall and jumped down into the centre of the tree. Only to find out that although the wall was 3 feet high on one side, it was 8 feet high on the other and I was now trapped inside the tree. The walls of the tree were slippery with rot and the opening at the top was about a foot beyond my reach.
My calls for help were met by my drunken and hysterical friends shouting “oh look, a talking treeâ€. Very amusing I’m sure. Visions of the front page headline of the local newspaper proclaiming “Drunken pillock rescued by fire brigade from a tree, parents very disappointed indeed†swam before my eyes.
Eventually I managed to get out, bizarrely enough via my equally idiotic friend jumping down there with me and letting me climb on his shoulders. I will leave you to ponder on how he managed to get out himself, some mysteries are better left unrevealed.
……………………………………
Since my last competition was so successful I thought I’d have another. What are your claims to ineptitude, incompetence and general idiocy? Did you once set fire to your head when attempting to light the gas fire? Have you walked into a lamp post while reading a particularly interesting newspaper article? Or, like my dad, have you accidentally cut the arteries on your wrists while demonstrating to a class full of schoolchildren how not to cut themselves on sheet metal?
Just as last time there is a prize. This time it’s a DVD of my favourite Laurel and Hardy Film, Towed in a Hole, which I found in the Everything’s a Pound shop the other week. It is region free so should work in DVD players throughout the world. The closing date for the competition is midnight 1st of November. Stick your story in the comments of this post and let’s all have a laugh at each other’s expense. Go on, participate; you know you want to.
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on Oct 25th, 2006 at 4:33 pm
I went into the Everything’s £1 shop looking to kill half an hour. Browsing through the shelves I came across the Laurel and Hardy DVD and, recognised its value as a fantastic blog competition prize. Grasping it in my sweaty little hands I rushed past the Everything’s £1 banner and up to the Everything’s £1 customer service desk and attracted the attention of a man uniformed man with Everything’s £1 written in bold yellow letters across his t-shirt.
“Excuse me†I asked him. “Could you tell me how much this DVD is?â€
“£1 mateâ€
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on Oct 25th, 2006 at 7:26 pm
That was fairly stupid.
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on Oct 25th, 2006 at 9:21 pm
My wife (Rachel) has asked that you clarify the rules: Can one person only have one entry? My wife is quite convinced that I could possible sweep places 1-6 as well as several more in the teens.
Henry
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on Oct 26th, 2006 at 1:08 am
well, this is hardly a fair competition. no female could win it.
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on Oct 26th, 2006 at 2:44 am
Hey, Dan! I think this contest would be a lot more fun if instead of each person doing their own confessing, you had their spouse telling the tale. That way, a woman could win by airing her husband’s dirty laundry.
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on Oct 26th, 2006 at 5:01 am
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on Oct 26th, 2006 at 10:46 am
Jared: You are talking to a man with a degree in media studies. A qualification so useless that I had to go back to university and get another one (Nursing this time, so much more practical).
Henry: As many entries as you like, the more the better.
Bon Bon: Complaining about the judging process again I see. Well never fear, the judging criteria will be even more rigorous than last time if that is even possible. This time I will be using two separate complex algorithms which will be run in parallel, the results of which will be fed into an extensive database which has powerful gender compensation macros. So the final result will be as balanced and as fair a one as the cutting edge of modern technology can provide.
Deb: The spouse spilling the beans sounds pretty good, although I suspect you would have an unfair advantage being married to Greg. Both self confessions and ratting on your partner will be accepted.
Phil: A fine effort, with added gore for the more bloodthirsty among us.
Ok, so we have two entries and a few people who look like they are gearing up to have a go. As before I will only award the prize if there are at least ten entrants. I think we ended up with 15 last time, so it should be achievable. So even if you think your story is a little weak, contribute it anyway so that somebody has the chance of winning.
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on Oct 27th, 2006 at 1:03 pm
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on Oct 27th, 2006 at 1:32 pm
Or at least I MEANT to email my friend. I actually hit “Reply To All” and shared my opinion with the whole company (about 600 people) including the Company Security Controller who had sent the email. Not 10 seconds later my phone rang. Can you guess who it was?
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on Oct 27th, 2006 at 6:10 pm
I also did the “wrong recipient” thing on an e-mail, but fortunately not to the whole company. I had received a forwarded e-mail complaint written by a neighbor of one of my company’s plants. He was upset about our employees sometimes parking longer than the 2-hour limit on the (public) street in front of his house.
He also said he wanted the use of the street in front of his house to park because he’d had hip surgery.
I intended to send an e-mail back to the co-worker who sent it to me, but instead I accidentally sent my response to the complainer.
I made a snide comment about “didn’t he realize when he bought his house, right next to the big manufacturing facility that’s been there for 40 years, that he might experience some inconvenience?” I also basically laughed at him for saying that he should be able to have use of the public street for his parking (instead of using his driveway), above all other parkers.
I said that if he had issues with people staying in the parking spaces over two hours, that he obviously should take that up with the city police, who, after all, are supposed to enforce parking laws.
Sigh.
It still makes me cringe to think about it.
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on Oct 27th, 2006 at 8:37 pm
I was having a clear out and sorting through a box of old audio cassette tapes. There was one in a blank case and I wondered what was on it…. so I picked it up and put it next to my ear to ‘listen’ to it. It took me about a second to realise that this wouldn’t work.
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on Oct 27th, 2006 at 9:46 pm
Yes I agree, Steve and Deb are a couple of no-hopers. Imagine being stupid enough to send an email to the wrong recipient by mistake. What kind of idiot do you need to be to do something like that? I’m glad that I’m not that stupid.
Oh by the way, that rash has started to clear up. You were right – natural yogurt cleared it right up; there is only a small patch under my armpit and the crusty bit on my scalp left.
Your loving husband.
Dan.
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on Oct 28th, 2006 at 12:56 am
A story about my husband (who is still on his way home from a business trip and therefore can’t tell stories on me yet):
Greg and I were arguing one morning as he took out the trash, probably about who hadn’t cleaned the cat’s litter box (that would be me, by the way).
He was in the garage, putting the lid on the 50 gallon rolling garbage can that needed to go to the curb as I hung out the door, arguing. Greg took the garbage can and tried to manuveur it past both of our parked cars.
There wasn’t enough room (also my fault, I’m sure, for not parking over far enough). Greg dragged the garbage can out anyway, scratching our not-even-two-year-old car on the front fender.
Then, because he was still ticked at me, he kept dragging it. He inflicted four or five long scratches (that did not come out, by the way) on my car–all along the car.
One on the fender, one on the passenger side door, one on the back passenger door–you get the idea.
Not one of his better moments.
Oh, and to prevent him from bringing it up, I once hit our neighbor’s car backing out of our garage, because even though I had seen the car there earlier, it wasn’t a normal parking space. Fortunately, it was an old car. I think we gave them $100 for the damage and that was it.
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on Oct 28th, 2006 at 2:16 am
i’ve been racking my brain for an entry just to get your count up, and i don’t want to come off as being someone who’s never asinine ’cause i’ve tripped over plenty of twigs in my time, or discovered only after a serious discussion that i had parsley between my front teeth, but those really don’t measure up.
what if i told you the stupidest thing i ever did was let my first husband talk me into marrying him. that was ten years of dumb!
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on Oct 29th, 2006 at 9:27 pm
Adulthood:
1: The time I blew off Rachel’s warnings to be careful fueling the truck at the farm by saying,”you know, I was a fuel systems engineer for quite a while” and then went right out there and filled up our gas guzzling truck with diesel. I just got distracted, filled up, jumped in the truck and made it all the way back to the house before the diesel hit the engine and choked it. Opened the gas tank and took a sniff, yup, $@%&, diesel. Bonus stupidity: Had a sip of the diesel while starting the syphon to get it back out.
2: While on a two week business trip to Mexico I got a little bored with the food that was “gringo safe” and as my first foray into the local food I had a broiled ball of fish and cheese in a restaurant where I was the only gringo. This thing was easily the size of a softball and was served all by its lonsome with only a lime garnish. Either it was damn good or I was hungry. By the time I had “digested” this thing, I thought I might never eat anything again. It was like it reassembled itself into a softball sized lump in my belly and refused to be digested while somehow controlling several of my bodily functions that even on a good day aren’t under my own conscious control. I ask you, who goes into a restaurant in a part of Mexico where they aren’t supposed to drink the water and eats a ball of cleverly diguised, probably rotten fish?
Childhood:
1: I was the sixth grade boy who let his mom talk him into getting a perm.
2:I was the seventh grade boy who let his mom talk him into getting another perm as a solution to the problem that what was left of the first perm was making him look really weird.
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on Oct 31st, 2006 at 2:15 am
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on Oct 31st, 2006 at 4:32 pm
I once ate Marmite.
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on Nov 1st, 2006 at 9:15 am
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on Nov 2nd, 2006 at 2:00 pm
[...] A well deserved victory, not just for his entry here, but for his efforts over at his own blog. If you send me your address Henry I’ll pop the DVD in the post for you (as soon as I can find the damn thing that is). [...]
on Nov 19th, 2006 at 5:19 am
Although waaayyyyy after the deadline I thought I’d through in my own stupid moment.
After an internal fault in our house some of the light switches became live. After getting an electric shock I then turned the light switch off ‘to make it safe’ thus giving myself a second shock.
Yes, before you mention it sister and bro-in-law, I have worked for an electricity company for the past 4years dealing with power cuts and peoples safety.
Seems its always when you have the best intentions…..
http://snopes.com/photos/accident/gunsafety.asp
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on Oct 3rd, 2007 at 11:04 pm
[...] This was the era of the great pig farm camp out, the cat’s eye caper, and of course the curious incident of the talking tree. As often happens I’ve lost touch with nearly everyone now. I only see Barra anymore, and [...]
on Nov 6th, 2007 at 1:01 am
[...] Well thats another fine mess, 25th October [...]